Re: New suites vs. common release cycle [Was: Productivity suite]

[Martin Sevior <msevior physics unimelb edu au>]

On Tue, 2005-06-14 at 00:08 +0200, Christian Rose wrote:

> Judging from my own experience, not many users complain that each and
> every application out there isn't released as part of GNOME. They don't
> know what GNOME is; they basically just got their distro and whatever
> applications it included by default. For these users, what we officially
> include in GNOME and what we don't wouldn't change a thing, as they get
> all the applications anyway as part of the distro.
> 
> But from the users that actually know what GNOME is, I have received
> nothing but positive feedback in terms of how the user experience of
> consistency and integration has improved through the latest releases.
> So, at least to me it seems strange that we should intentionally start
> going in the opposite direction, and as a consequence be diluting our
> brand name (for those who know the difference) for no obvious reason.
> 

Well a lot of this is speaking in the abstract saying if we do this then
we need to do that.

Rather than speaking in the abstract why not address what GNOME would
get (or what GNOME would lose) by including AbiWord in it's release.

You can apply the same criteria to any other application that wishes to
be included.

>From my own biased view point here is what GNOME gets from AbiWord:

1. An an extremely useful writing tool far superior to what ships by
default from either MS or Apple.

2. A point of integration for one of the main purposes of computers,
constructing documents.

3. A very active and committed community of developers, testers and
translators all committed to the same free software ideals as GNOME.

4. An opportunity to do new things with documents and desktops. GOCollab
is one example. Another that I'm actually much more excited about is
doing clever searches (through your desktop, intranet over the internet)
on the fly as you type. There are many other possibilities I've thought
of. I'm sure the clever hackers in the GNOME community could dream up
more. Our plugin system is extremely powerful and the AbiWord core can
be extended in sorts of interesting ways.

5. An object lesson for how other high quality applications could be
included in the GNOME desktop. (Fill in your favourite non-gnome
application here.)

6. A solution the problem Miguel showed right at the start of his GUADEC
address. What application do you start when you need to create a
document?

I could write some things about Open Office but in the spirit of
cooperation I won't.

Cheers

Martin


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